Back when Lost co-creator Damon Lindelof signed a seven-figure deal with Disney to co-write a sci-fi movie with Jeff Jensen, we knew very little about the project. The title of this secretive project was changed from 1952 to Tomorrowland earlier this month. All we knew at the time was that George Clooney signed to star, and Brad Bird is directing. Now Hugh Laurie is in negotiations to play the villain in Tomorrowland, which THR describes as being “in the vein of Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” Let the battle of the TV doctors commence! First one to take the most Vicodin wins (House has a bit of an advantage there).

Our best guess so far regarding what the film might be about comes from Disney historian Jim Hill, who analyzed a photo (at right) posted to Twitter by Brad Bird. The short version is this: Tomorrowland may be based on the true story about the time the U.S. Army approached Walt Disney about producing a documentary to tell the public that UFOs exist.

Supposedly after the “Man in Space” episode of the Tomorrowland-inspired “Disneyland” TV series, […] various government officials approached Walt with the idea to do a show about UFOs. It was their hope that, through the fanciful eyes of Walt Disney, he could release this information in a way that wouldn’t cause mass hysteria or social upheaval (the documentary would touch on the fact that aliens have been visiting Earth periodically throughout history.) Supposedly the episode, according to Hill and his various sources, was canceled when the government types refused to release actual footage of UFOs that they had amassed, coupled with their claim that, while they wanted Walt to produce the documentary, they wouldn’t do it unless they themselves fully understood what the UFOs really were and how they worked. [The Playlist]